The massive, sucker-covered carcass of a giant squid washed onto the rocky shore of Scarborough Beach in Cape Town, South Africa,
Giant ‘kraken’ carcass with dinner plate-size eyes washes ashore in South Africa, The beast, which measured nearly 14 feet (4.3 meters) long, was the second giant squid to crop up on a beach in the region this year, according to the South African news site news24(opens in new tab). carcass , The last known giant squid (Architeuthis dux) to wash ashore near Cape Town showed up about 6 miles (10 kilometers) northwest of Scarborough Beach, on Long Beach in Kommetjie, on April 30, Live Science previously reported. That cephalopod measured roughly 11.5 feet (3.5 m) long. For comparison, the largest giant squid ever seen measured a whopping 43 feet (13 m) long, and some studies suggest that the creatures could potentially reach 66 feet (20 m) long, although no squid of such size has ever been spotted.
Giant ‘kraken’ carcass with dinner plate-size eyes washes ashore in South Africa, The squid that washed onto Scarborough Beach this week seemed to be another A. dux specimen, said Mike Vecchione, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration invertebrate zoologist stationed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. “Although other large squids exist, I am fairly certain this is a true giant squid,” he told Live Science in an email. Other squid species, including the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), rival A. dux in terms of sheer size, and some scientists argue that the Architeuthis genus actually includes a variety of giant squid species, rather than A. dux alone, according to the Smithsonian(opens in new tab). Without an examination of its internal organs, it’s difficult to guess how the Scarborough Beach squid perished, Vecchione said. “Note that most of the skin has abraded and some of the arms are broken off, but this (especially the skin abrasion) can result from washing up on the rocky shore.” The remaining skin on the squid’s mantle — the muscular sheath that houses its organs — gleamed ghostly white in the sun. It may be that the squid ventured into shallow, near-shore waters to feed and got struck by a ship propeller, “but this is difficult to prove without witnesses,” Dylan Clarke, a marine scientist and curator at Iziko South African Museum, told news24. “The literature suggests that they come up into shallower waters because they display a behaviour called diel vertical migration. In other words, they venture into shallower waters during the evening to feed and migrate back to deeper waters during the day.”
Source: This news is originally published by livescience